After two months of snowfall the number of philosophers staying in the Gardens dwindled near to nothing. Most of the elders realized their golden ages were behind them and they had nothing to prove by suffering the weather.

Travelers from across the Civilized Lands claimed snow blanketed half the territory. To the Great Cities it was little more than an inconvenience. For the majority of the population who lived on farmland and in remote villages it was a tragedy. Only the Increate knows how many families succumbed, holding each other in their cold, dark homes, waiting for someone to come lay them to rest.

Many folk passed through Odena on their way to Velassa. Rumor had it that Archon Nony kept the city safe and well-heated. The same rumor left out Nony does not approve of vagrants.

I found myself spending more time at Amelie in Yellow than I should. One night I sat at a table alone, drinking a snifter of brandy. The sting of the alcohol no longer bothered me but I was careful not to drink too much or too often. Never touched the opium. I had no intention of joining those sad, limpid souls lounging on the first floor, drool trickling down their chin.

Some men at a nearby table were discussing the snow. They argued about different theories. One of them was new. Winter had used a colossal amount of power and all of this cold was the result of the backlash. Not the worst idea but it raised more questions than it answered.

“I’ve never seen you here alone.” A soft voice, warped behind a dragon mask. One of the Amelies slipped into the seat beside me. Olive-skinned, her dark hair tamed into a long braid.

“The others are busy,” I said. “I kept thinking of the mystery of this place today. A silly thing to obsess over. Smarter people than I have thought about it and no one has ever won. I think I’ll solve it, though.”

She crossed her legs and folded her hands on her lap. “Sensi is an excellent teacher. Best of luck.”

I finished my drink and left a denarius as a tip. By the time I descended the staircase and reached the exit one of the Amelies had located my cloak and slipped me into it. Only the best service.

It was early in the night. Lyra would be awake. Her recent paintings had sold for a tidy sum and she was home working on her next series, a commission from a new patron. She had become more withdrawn over the past weeks. Perfectly normal, she assured me. Her work would absorb all her attention for a while. I found myself thinking of her more often than I should.

I liked her but I suspected I liked the idea of her more. Mature, intelligent, charming. Well-known enough to be recognized in public by other artists. When some of them learned I was an acolyte of the philosophers they would challenge me on esoterica. Fortunately my power to give them their own answer mitigated most of their attempts. Proving myself was the first challenge; next came the long discussions about aesthetics, reinforced with multilingual posturing like negativo chromoso and arteste pestere.

Anest, a handsome youth with swept-back hair who had earned some recognition as a sculptor, could always reduce me to laughter. He was the only one of her friends I met multiple times during those weeks. On our second encounter I paid for his drinks and listened to his solemn witticisms all night. At the end Lyra said if I was so enamored with him I should invite him to join us at her place. I chuckled and only realized a couple days later what she meant, and that she was quite serious.

Despite their arrogance I actually liked most of them. They viewed themselves as overlooked geniuses but in a playful way, as if the world was playing a joke by ignoring their masterpieces. I heard more lewd metaphors and brothel discussions than I cared to remember, enough to convince me the entire artist community consists of unapologetic degenerates, but at least the amusing sort.

Still, when I was with them I always found myself wishing I was reading or practicing my swordwork. None of that appealed to me tonight. I needed rest and some time to reflect on the Amelie mystery.

I headed back to the Gardens. With my winnings from gambling I could have rented a cozy private room; instead I invested in a safe haven in one of the less populated areas, well-stocked in case I had to hide for a few days and flee the city. Felix continued to sleep in the barracks and so would I. Avarus took it a step further and still refused to wear a cloak.

I intended to forge myself into a weapon. A little cold shouldn’t make me brittle.

Every night I stopped by Augur’s hut to see if he had returned. Tonight the firepit was roaring and he meditated beside it, oblivious to the licking flames. My desire for solitude immediately evaporated. Shadows played across his face. Eyes closed, peaceful as a figure in some chapel mural.

“Hail, Leones,” he said.

I fell back a step in surprise.“How did you know I was here?”

He opened his eyes and grinned. “Who else would you be? I don’t have many visitors, especially in this cold. Such a shame. Winter is the perfect time for contemplation.”

“You’ve been gone.”

“I have. There is a big, strange world out there. Have you kept up with your meditating?”

Lying to him would be pointless. “Not as much as I should. I’m too easily distracted.”

He stood, waving his hand in dismissal. “You’re the right age for distractions. Come in, I’ll make some tea.”

I followed him into his hut. “Can you teach me the staccato?”

“You’re not keeping up with your meditation but you want me to teach you one of the most complex skills a philosopher can learn?” Augur fussed with the potted plants, rubbing leaves and shaking his head. “Why the sudden interest?”

No point in lying. “I’ve been going to Amelie in Yellow recently.”

Augur chuckled. “I can’t say I approve but you’re free to do as you wish. Sensi has created quite the trap for people like you. Are you trying to win the guessing game? You should realize you’re at a great disadvantage here.”

“Yes,” I said, “but I want to learn as much as I can.”

The philosopher fell into a coughing fit. Afterwards he looked at his hand in distaste as if there was something there. Blood? “The staccato is a difficult thing to learn. An even harder thing to teach. The more you learn, the more it will change you. It’s a method of dissecting your experiences, which makes it a personal journey. But I will try my best."

I nodded and swallowed a knot of tension I hadn’t realized was there. “Thank you.”

“You heard none of my warning, only my agreement," he said. "The power of mankind comes from our delusions. To survive in this harsh world we developed a sense of self. To thrive in it, we created the lie of civilization. The staccato teaches us that society is only a dream we share. Even deeper, the self is a fabrication.”

During my time with the philosophers I had been drowned in various grand claims about the nature of reality. Feeling I should say something, I grunted in agreement. It must not have been very convincing.

“I remember being young. I never listened to good advice either.” He sighed. “You are certain?”

I nodded again.

So he explained the way I had been learning was fundamentally flawed. I had neglected training my memory, the foundation of the staccato. If I wanted to be able to read someone I would have to remember every facial muscle, how they interacted to form complex expressions. If I expected to travel throughout the Civilized Lands I would encounter a dozen common languages, each with a litter of dialects so diverse two people could claim to speak the same language without understanding each other.

He claimed there were methods of remembering entire tomes of information and, in light of my father’s eidetic recall of his library, I believed him.

“The mind must be honed through meditation and techniques such as the creation of memory palaces,” he said. “Our memory is imperfect because our minds are imperfect. It is the skill of the artist that brings his work to life: the better he is, the more real it seems.”

Brother Augur had created an imaginary arboretum in his mind that mirrored his surroundings exactly. He stored memories of love in the river, his favorite songs and stories in the firepit.

He encouraged me to use a large area that I remembered well. I immediately thought of my family manor: the heat and smells of the kitchens, my room with its gorgeous view of Tailors Avenue, the chaotic splendor of my father’s study. According to Augur, if I formed a connection between information and specific parts of my memory palace I would be more likely to form an accurate recollection. Each connection would have a special resonance that made it easy to remember.

Whatever doubts I had were extinguished after he demonstrated the usefulness of the technique. He had me attempt to remember a list of thirty words through my usual method of staring at them intently---an abject failure.

After that he told me to form a mental image of each word, a unique and memorable creation. For ‘fish’ he had me visualize a salmon the size of a horse laying on one of the kitchen floors. For ‘yellow’ I imagined one of the Amelies, proud and straight-backed in one of the sitting room recliners. To recall them in order I wandered through the halls of my memory palace, noting each part of this bizarre menagerie as I passed.

I recited all thirty back to him.

“You have a talent for visualization,” he said. It was a bit pathetic how much I enjoyed his praise.

This, he told me, was the most valuable gift he had to offer, concluding the lesson. He offered a few more pointers, such as changing the lighting to see how it affected my mental state---to my surprise, illuminating the rooms well seemed to improve my overall mood. Over time I would discover the unique features of my own memory palace.

I agreed to stay a few hours and dine with him. Silence stretched between us and, even though Brother Augur appeared comfortable, I had to admit I was dissatisfied. What was I expecting, my first lesson to be us walking through the streets, convincing old ladies to hand over their jewelry?

Augur removed a sketchpad and began to draw, refusing to reveal his illustration.

I meditated to pass the time. Clarity of mind eluded me more than usual. Unwelcome thoughts rushed past my half-hearted defenses.

I found myself wandering through the memory of my family manor. There were no comically large salmon or other anomalies. It was as I remembered it, perfect and welcoming. Home. Part of my consciousness remembered that I was sitting in the lotus position, meditating; but I must have fallen half into the land of sleep, pressing against the thin barrier of a dream.

I walked through familiar halls until I came across a servant, a shadow like a brushstroke of black. Though I shouted for its attention the not-person drifted past. I increased my pace, quickly coming to my father’s study. I remembered it perfectly, the familiar chaos.

When I opened the door I saw only emptiness beyond. It was not darkness. It was an absence. Nothingness. I sensed something, a presence in the void, then in a moment it vanished.

My eyes snapped open. My heart fluttered in my chest, panic-fast. Breath struggled through a throat shrunk to the size of a reed. I leaned forward, balancing myself on one hand, ragged gasps leaking out.

Augur turned back to watch, then his head twisted to the side faster than a falcon’s. I followed his gaze and saw nothing in the distance. His gaze snapped up to the evening sky, where the moon watched over us. There his eyes remained and, when my breathing gradually returned to normal and my heart settled once more, I looked there too.

I saw nothing.

“Tell me what you have been doing recently,” said Augur. “Now.”

I began to talk about Lyra and my visits to gambling dens but he waved that away with an incredulous look on his face. I had never seen such a disturbed expression on his face and, in a ridiculous way, I was hurt by it.

“None of that is important,” he said. “What do you know of Desolada? Have you been using the names of the Goetia? Some of them are not even safe to think about.”

Desolada. The home of the demon lords, associated with the moon and the aether, a place of terrible beauty. Some claimed that the wicked went there after death, to exist in thrall for all eternity. The priests did not preach this publicly, and none of the holy texts made the claim, but it was the sort of thing mothers told their children, and that was a greater authority.

Now it was my turn to look incredulous. “I’ve done no more than any other.”

“What is it that you think others do?” His voice held a sharpness I had never heard from him.

Memories came to me in a jumble. What had I done? He insinuated I had been dealing with the Goetia---a death sentence even in Odena. In Velassa the rumor of it could see you roasted slow in the public square.

“I read the story of the fall of Arostara. Lakken has it in his library.”

Brother Augur’s hand beat a frantic rhythm against his hip. Muscles worked along his jaw as he gritted his teeth. “Prince Sitri is supposedly no more. While many claim the Goetia cannot be destroyed, Winter is said to have sealed him for eternity. Since then Sitri has never answered any summons. Of the demon lords he was one of the weakest as well. He would never have dared to step foot so far within the Civilized Lands. This is far beyond him.”

I thought back to the story of the Fall of Arostara and the Iconoclast. “If Prince Sitri was one of the weakest of the Seventy-Seven then how can the Archons protect us from them?”

The tension evaporated from his face and he once more assumed the face of a teacher, lofty and aloof. “Not all of them seek dominion over man. They are not of this world, perhaps not even of our cosmos. We cannot know them just as we cannot know the will of the wind or the deep thoughts of the ocean. Some of them find us interesting, like a butterfly collector who admires his specimen on the killing board. Others use men as their tools. The men they enslave are called many things---Heralds, Harbingers, Echoes. Their relationship seems beneficial at first but I know full well how easily a man is deceived. Nothing good comes from associating with the Goetia.”

I nodded, trying not to seem too interested. Augur’s agitation already seemed like a distant memory, his face carved from stone. But I forced myself to remember how his iron will had cracked, and that was no small thing.

I tried to coax more information from him to no avail. I thought of using my power to go back in time before I caught the attention of whatever demon lord lurked about. Several excuses held me back but I knew they were just that---excuses. I wanted to know and be known.

The idea of Echoes had caught my attention and would not release me from its dark grip. They sounded like ambassadors of the Goetia, imbued with special powers and privileges. From Frontier to Frontier the Goetia were cursed as monsters, yet Augur had admitted they were not united against mankind. He compared them to forces of nature. The sea did not hate. It may go into frenzies and destroy everything in its path, but it did so with utter indifference.

I did know one thing: at least one of the Archons was my enemy. Demons had not killed my family.

Since birth I had been told this world was a battlefield between mankind and everything else under the sun. When we expanded the Frontier we took the land from others. Not just demons, but nagas, giants, mind-arachnids, and a thousand others.

I never questioned our place in the world until that moment. The church claimed that we had a divine right to rule after existing under the yoke of the Goetia for so long, as if revenge was a mandate of heaven, yet what of the sentient creatures fortunate enough to never encounter us until we marched on their lands with steel and flame?

I could not have blamed Brother Augur if he killed me where I stood. He must have seen some of my thoughts writ clear on my face. Who knows if he would have been doing the world a favor. If all of my future deeds were weighed on the scales of justice, I could not say which way it would tip. Whose scales, whose justice?

Of Brother Augur I knew little. His past must have haunted him enough that he secluded himself from the world. At that point in his life he must not have been able to bear the sin of killing a boy just because the Goetia interested him.

We ate a simple meal of fish and cheese in silence. He said nothing when I offered my farewells and departed.